Jake McGoldrick: Supporting Local Job Creation

The success of our local economy depends greatly on our ability as a City to attract and retain local jobs. This has been the focus of my office in formulating positions on legislation and development proposals that have come before the SF Board of Supervisors.

With this philosophy in mind, I agreed to sponsor an item that passed the board that has changed the way the San Francisco Airport contracts for food concessions at the domestic terminal. In the past, the airport favored big companies, like Marriott Concessions, with a master contract and allowed them to decide what kind of food would be provided at airport concession areas.

This year, we changed that arrangement by having the airport contract directly with local restaurants, such as Firewood Pizza. This will greatly improve the dining experience for those who come through our airport and, most importantly, help create additional jobs to support our local economy.

Similarly, I opposed the airport's initial attempt this year to contract out the development of an airport cargo terminal to a huge out-of-state corporation with political connections to big money lobbyists and the Brown administration. This bad deal would have cost the airport much more money and would have resulted in significantly increased fees to airlines based at SFO. In fact, the airlines unanimously opposed the airport's initial proposal and many threatened to move their operations elsewhere if the sweetheart deal was approved.

I fought hard against the deal and eventually convinced a majority of my colleagues that it was not in the best interest of the City. I then convinced the director at the airport to explore "direct development" (do it ourselves) of the cargo facility.

Fortunately, the SF Airport Commission and the mayor recently agreed with my direct development proposal and, as a result, we will be able to keep all of those good-paying jobs and also avoid the loss of airlines that might have left the airport if the other development proposal had been approved.
In addition, both "big box retail" and "formula retail" legislation recently passed the Board of Supervisors with my support because I was convinced they would foster a healthy and local small business economy. In both cases, the legislation amended local land use controls to regulate the approval of certain kinds of retail development.

The big box retail legislation restricts huge retail stores to the downtown area, where large retail uses are already allowed, and would require a Conditional Use Permit for large retail stores in the rest of the City. This allows each neighborhood to weigh-in on whether such stores would have negative impacts on their neighborhoods or businesses.

Formula retail legislation likewise requires neighborhood notification whenever a chain store applies to open in their neighborhood. Neighbors will have the option of requesting a public hearing to consider the existing concentration of formula retail businesses within the neighborhood, whether similar goods or services are already available, the compatibility of the proposed business with the character of the neighborhood, retail vacancy rates in the area and the balance of neighborhood serving versus citywide or regional serving businesses.

These two ordinances help preserve existing small businesses and foster the opening of new small business in our City. And experience has proven that local small businesses are the best generators of local jobs and tax revenues.

Next Town Hall Meeting
Please join me for our next District 1 Town Hall Meeting on Saturday, July 17, from 10 a.m. ­ noon, at the Richmond Recreation Center, 251 ­ 18th Ave. The meeting will be an open forum where you can bring up any concern of importance as a resident of District 1. I look forward to seeing you there.

Jake McGoldrick represents District 1.